Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Predictors of patriotism

I was interested in predicting patriotism. GSS participants were asked how close they feel to America. I recoded the variable so that "close" and "very close" equal 1 and "not very close" and "not close at all" equal 0. Here are the logistic regression coefficients:

All of the relationships are statistically significant except for those of some other race. Keep in mind that the coefficients are unstandardized so they cannot be compared for size. Age, race, gender, and church attendance have the strongest impact. The profile of a person who loves America goes like this: white, male, older, native-born, Jewish, religious, and does not live in the Mid-Atlantic region (NY, NJ, PA). (Education, income, IQ, job prestige, and political orientation were found to be unrelated to feeling close to the country).

Women more religious and men more patriotic? That actually makes perfect sense. One thing Ron's found a few times is a positive correlation between A and B, and B and C, but a negative correlation between A and C. It's an interesting counterintuitive case.

A lot of Jews old enough to remember the Holocaust are quite happy to be in the USA!

Profile

"The creation myth was the essential bond that held the tribe together. It provided its believers with a unique identity, commanded their fidelity, strengthened order, vouchsafed law, encouraged valor and sacrifice, and offered meaning to the cycles of life and death. No tribe could survive long without the meaning of its existence defined by a creation story. The option was to weaken, dissolve, and die." ~ E.O. Wilson